


To W., on a Question

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson, Holmes and the aftermath of canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To W., on a Question

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Speranza

 

 

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me and no infringement of Conan Doyle's estate or the intellectual property of Young Sherlock Holmes is intended.

School holidays. They would be more fun if Watson had anyone to spend them with.

He was not alone. He had a great number of acquaintances from school- well, as great a number as could be supported by a quiet country school, meaning four- and they were always up for swimming in the creek, or trying to catch the ill-tempered stallion in Mr. Penderham's upper paddock. Off and on, he had known them for most of his life. Then there was his father. The quiet life of a country doctor was not glamorous: Dr. Watson was more often called to attend a difficult birth in the stable than the house. But he was a bluff and friendly man, always ready to discuss his cases or take his son out with him on his rounds in preparation for the younger Watson's ascent to the scalpel.

But the joys of diagnosing gout or sliding down the riverbanks were somehow lost on John this year.

His father looked up from his breakfast of rashers and toast. "Letter came last night, Johnnie."

"A letter?" Letters were rare enough to overlook the Johnnie.

"Your great-aunt Mabel, in London. Wants you to go and stay with her."

John tried not to look flabbergasted. "I thought she wasn't speaking to our side of the family ever since Mother- mm-"

"Married me," his father agreed. "Looks like she's decided to spare you. You might as well go. If she takes a shine to you, she could help you establish a respectable practice later on. And if she mentions you in her will, so much the better."

What did he even remember of Your Great Aunt Mabel? John had met her   
precisely once before, when he had been five. She had been a terrible vision in a gray serge dress. He had thought that 'Your Great' was her title at the time, the same way a duke was addressed as 'Your Grace.'

But- London. He had been there, for the first time, a year ago. It felt at monstrously long ago and unbearably recent. He had met friends, and enemies, and discovered he was not the mouse he had always imagined himself to be. And he had met Holmes- Holmes, that curious blend of intellect and need.

John had admired Holmes' fearless acknowledgement of his need for affection. He had been brought up in a stoic family. He knew, if he thought about it, that his father cared for him deeply, and that his mother's constant plying of him with food meant the same thing. Love was a thing measured in French horns and anatomy books. But it was a thing unsaid. Not so for Holmes- at least while Elizabeth was alive.

With Elizabeth' death, Holmes had changed. A wall came down between him and the rest of the world. Schoolfellows could like the outgoing Holmes of before, but to this new, colder version they could offer at most only the distance of respect.

Of course, Holmes wouldn't be in London now. He would be back with his family in Suffolk- or was it Surrey? Some kind of country squire type. John couldn't imagine they were a very close family. He knew little about Holmes' own home environment, but it must have been rather chilly, if Holmes wouldn't even send a message to his brother when he was expelled from Brompton.

Still, to walk those streets where he had had such a grand adventure... John put his breakfast down, and went upstairs to pack.

It was a long journey by coach, and John spent most of it alone, his father pointing out that he had been quite emphatically excluded from the invitation.

The streets of London were the same- gray, and covered with snow trampled by the feet of innumerable workers and gentlemen, ladies and flower-sellers, costermongers, wheelwrights and pickpockets, professors and prostitutes, fops and earnest theology students, blacksmiths and locksmiths.

His Great Aunt Mabel lived in an intimidatingly stern townhouse several blocks removed from the center of town. He stood by the door for several moments, attempting to work up the courage to rap upon its dark oak surface. The cold worried at his face and hands.

"I shouldn't, if I were you. She won't want to see anyone she's not expecting," a stranger passing by called out. Watson was not certain if it was good manners to respond to such accostation. It would serve to delay his confrontation with Great Aunt Mabel, however, so he decided to be mannerly to a fault.

He turned to the lanky stranger. "Do you know her well?" he asked.

The stranger was muffled in a heavy coat, stooped from great age. "I know she was in a terrible temper this morning, only because her maid hadn't gotten a tomato stain out of her morning-gown. She beat her with her slipper."

Watson swallowed at this new evidence of his aunt's terrible Greatness. "She is expecting me," he said.

"I doubt it, Watson," the stranger said.

"I beg your pardon?"

The old man threw off his coat to reveal the figure of Sherlock Holmes, looking as if he had stepped out of last year. Unmindful of Watson's frank gaping, he straightened up to rub the small of his back. "I sent you the invitation," he explained.

"But- my aunt's stationery! Her handwriting!"

"The latter is easily copied- the former easily obtained to those who scruple not," Holmes replied.

"I haven't heard from you in a year," Watson said.

"I would have had nothing to say. It was a singularly unstimulating time. I stood is as long as I could, but my brain requires exercise. It has been too long idling in the country. I believe yours may be suffering from the same malaise, so I undertook to bring you here."

Watson goggled for a moment. Holmes had no idea that he might have   
inconvenienced him, or that John, if he had been asked, would have done everything in his power to come anyway.

"Where will we stay?" he asked, surrendering to a greater force.

"I have taken rooms at a lodging-house not too far, where the staff are all agog to meet my younger cousin, come with me to see the great city," Holmes replied. He seemed to not have changed in the intervening year. His hair still looked like it was about to fly off his head, and his long and somewhat drooping face was enlivened only by his energetic eyes and mobile mouth. The air of coldness he exuded was perhaps stronger than it had been. "Bring your bags, Watson, once we've dropped them off we have a case to get to."

"A case?" Watson asked. "How could you have arranged for a case? You sent that letter from my Great Aunt Mabel weeks ago."

"Don't be absurd. You can't order crimes out of the Fortnum's catalogue. I knew that if we were in London for any particular period of time, some form of illegal activity was bound to take place. We're simply fortunate that it happened so soon!"

"Of course," Watson said. He hefted his bags up to his shoulders and trudged after   
Holmes.

Watson would not have chosen the word agog to describe the landlady. She was a massive and floury presence with the red face he had seen in his father's port-drinking patients. She led them to their rooms- two bedrooms joined together by a door, a sitting room, and a bathroom- and showed a tendency to fuss, dusting at the table and offering to add extra wood to the fire. Holmes tolerated no more than three minutes of this before he said abruptly, "That will be all, madam." His tone was coldness itself.

"I'm sure I meant no harm," she said righteously.

"We rarely mean what we do," Holmes said. He turned his attention to his   
newspaper like a slap.

"Well, I never- I'm sure-" She trailed mutters as she left.

Watson fussed. "That was somewhat harsh, Holmes."

"She had done her job. The rest was unnecessary."

Watson had never seen Holmes this way. He had always been friendly with Mrs. Dribb- even basked in her affection to a certain extent. And though he had kept a distance from the servants, he had always been kind.

"Let us pass on," Holmes said. "We should hurry. I would like to see what the   
bank looks like."

"The bank?" Watson looked up from putting his boots on.

He was repeating himself twelve blocks and forty minutes later. "A bank robbery. You want us to investigate a bank robbery."

"Not the most imaginative of crimes, I agree, but certainly one to add to the   
collection," Holmes agreed, gazing at the Thames Saving Bank's granite façade. An officer with the militant bearing of someone who had seen army service was stationed to one side, while the doors were sternly closed.

"I'm not even sixteen!" Watson protested.

"Currently, the police are treating this as an inside job," Holmes said. "A safe   
within the bank manager's office was discovered looted and empty of its valuable bonds. The safe was relocked after being robbed and there were no visible signs of its having been forcefully opened. " Holmes glanced at Watson to be sure he was following this. "One of Runskirk's- the manager's- clerks, a young man named Sykes, was found to be in severely straitened circumstances. He had access to the keys for the safe and was in the habit of staying late. Also, he has not been seen since the robbery. The police have put out an order for his arrest."

Holmes wasn't the only one who could deduce things. Watson could see where this was going. "We're going to track Sykes down and catch him ourselves," he said.

"Of course not. Sykes is innocent. His shoes make that perfectly clear. We're going to find the true culprits."

Shoes. Watson snorted. Holmes' sense of humour had at least survived.

John's concept of morality had stood him in good stead throughout his school life. Be quiet, do as you're told, and don't complain. There were hundreds of rules, spoken and unspoken, and you were meant to follow them all or face the consequences, from washing your hands after visiting the gentlemen's to rubbing your horse down after a long ride.

Holmes was moral as well. He hated dishonesty and dishonour in all their squalid forms. Even the accepted social niceties of prevarication seemed abhorrent to him. Yet he turned not a hair when jimmying the window to the Thames Saving Bank later that evening.

"Holmes," Watson hissed. "Surely they'll have doubled the security now! This is   
the worst possible time to be sneaking around."

"On the contrary. Their nerves are keyed to such a state that they will respond instantly to the least noise," Holmes replied. He fiddled with the window catch. It seemed to be sticking.

Watson felt hugely conspicuous. The window was around the side of the building and not easily spotted from the street, but he was all too aware that it would take only one curious reveler passing by to discover them. "Why are you pleased about that?"

"I took the liberty of visiting the local menagerie earlier today. Currently, the occupants of this building are comprised of one policeman, three dozen highly excitable rats, five pigeons, and a mouser bearing the worthy name of Dudley."

Watson gaped.

Holmes rolled on. "I would have picked the most similar rat to name after our old friend, but they each of them had such a good claim that I was at a loss to choose."

"I don't understand."

"You buffoon, Watson." The gangly figure in front of him clambered through the ground floor window with an unnerving spider-like agility. Moments later, Holmes' head popped back up from the inside. "It is perfectly simple. Here, give me your hand. The animals have been causing a ruckus throughout this building for the last four and one quarter hours." He pulled hard on Watson's hand. Watson had been unprepared for this and fetched up sharply against the windowsill, from which position he managed to begin climbing inside. "The guard would have initially responded with enthusiasm. By now, the animals have trained him to ignore any small scuffling noises as more nuisance than threat. Mind the drop."

Watson landed heavily. The building was darkened and eerie. "Animals can't train people," he protested, to keep his mind off the utter illegality of their current activities.

"No? Don't you give your father's dog scraps from the table?"

"Yes, but that's because he begs."

Holmes, with some inner sense of direction, headed down the left-hand corridor. "An instance of the carrot rather than the stick."

"How did you know it was my father's dog?"

"Watson, if I am to explain my reasoning to you every time I advance a deduction, we shall never solve anything," Holmes said irritably. "Both the trousers you arrived in and the ones you changed into bore whitish hairs on the upper thigh. This suggests they belong to an animal you see every day. Your mother is far too finicky to care for a dog, particularly a large hunter type, judging by the care she takes with your handkerchiefs. It is not your dog, or you would have told me some puerile anecdote by now. Only your father is left." He stopped in front of a heavy door. "This is the manager's room."

"It's locked," Watson pointed out.

"That concerns me as little as the window did." Holmes bent to. A few minutes later, the door creaked inwards a little, and they were able to open it.

The bank manager had a rather Spartan office- a desk, with lamp and blotter, one chair for himself and another for guests, and an ugly painting. Watson looked about for the safe.

"Over here." Holmes tapped the frame of the painting.

"The painting is a safe?"

Holmes lifted it off the wall. "The painting is in front of the safe."

The safe was made of a grayish metal. It looked formidable. Holmes clicked his tongue as he looked at it.

"I don't see any signs of its having been forced," Watson said.

Holmes ran a finger along the edge where the safe met the wall. He held it up. "I do."

A granular residue coated his index finger. "What is it?" Watson asked.

"Putty."

"Isn't that what you'd expect to find? They have to stick the safe in somehow, right?"

"Not at all. This putty is fresh. Watson," Holmes said, "I have cracked the case."

"We've only been here for a minute," Watson objected.

"Immaterial. You see the width of the putty? Two inches- far more than needed, showing the safe was slightly smaller than the cavity in which it was placed. If the wall had been custom-fitted with the safe, there would be no more than a half-inch of putty. This is a replacement safe, a little bit smaller than the original. And that is how the robbers got to it."

Holmes bent and took a bottle of dark liquid from his leather case. "If we loosen the putty around the safe- which, with the right chemical compound, is laughably easy- enough of a gap occurs that the entire safe can be slid out of the wall." He rubbed the liquid into the putty and motioned Watson to wait. A few minutes later, he scratched at the putty. Long strips flaked off.

Holmes attacked the upper two corners, creating a gap in the putty. He reached into the gap to gain hold of the corners of the safe and then pulled. The safe slid out easily. Evidently it was of significant weight, for Holmes' legs bowed as he took the safe into his arms, and he laid it on the floor as fast as he could.

"A quiz, Watson. What is the best way to open a wallsafe?"

"The key?" Watson suggested.

"I despair of you. A wallsafe is designed to fit snugly into a wall. Thus, to the designers' way of thinking, all five of the walls excepting the door will be surrounded at all times by a good foot of wood and thick plaster." Pulling a thin file from his jacket, Holmes knelt down and slipped it between the join of the top and back wall of the safe, waggling it back and forth. "Therefore they do not always take equal care to assure the sides are impregnable."

He twisted the file sharply to the left. The metal of the safe emitted a thin stretched shriek and the back warped outwards. From there it was a simple exercise to pop the back off altogether. "Remove what you want from here, replace the back, put the safe in its original position and reputty it. When the theft is discovered- and this may take days, for the newspaper reported that Mr. Runskirk was not in the habit of opening it on a daily basis- there will be no evidence of forced entry. While the police search for an inside job, the thief can quietly liquidate his takings."

"Monstrous!" Watson said.

"Clever," Holmes allowed. "But not clever enough. If the police thought to have the entire safe removed for analysis at their labs, the crowbar marks on the back would be apparent enough. And the theft occurred a full three days ago, yet the putty they used has not dried enough. It is still a noticeably darker colour than the surrounding wall. Had they been as clever as they evidently consider themselves to be, they should have used a quick-drying putty to lessen the likelihood of their trick being noticed."

Holmes put his file away with a decisive motion. Evidently, he felt he had done all he had come for. But Watson was still curious about something. He knelt.

"What are you doing?"

"I've never seen the inside of a safe before. Do you suppose it's got jewels or gold in it?"

"Considering it was looted recently, Watson, I find it exceedingly unlikely that it would have anything in it."

Watson stuck a curious hand in. "Wait, there is something." He peered inside and pulled a piece of paper out. "Oh. It's just a box and a rubbishy old letter. Unless it's a love letter to the Queen or something," he added.

Holmes stilled. "What does the letter say?"

"Hardly anything. 'Well-played.' I'm going to look at the box," Watson decided.

He was not prepared for an ungentle shove. "Don't touch it, man! Are you an imbecile?"

"Why? What is it?"

"A bomb," Holmes said grimly.

"That's insane! Who would put a bomb in a safe that's already been robbed? Unless the robbers were trying to destroy the evidence- and it malfunctioned, so it hasn't gone off yet?"

"Think, Watson! Though I have little respect for the police at the best of times, I doubt they should miss so thumping a clue as a bomb. The only explanation is- It was important the crime be considered the doing of Sykes, or some other convenient whipping-boy, long enough for the robbers to dispose of their gains. Then they returned, redid their trick with the putty, and planted the bomb."

"But why?"

"Thumbing their nose at us, Watson- us and the police. The bomb would go off and deform the safe enough that their trick would never be seen through. And if anyone happened to be poking around- why, all the better! They can take out an officer of the law without the least danger to themselves." Holmes frowned. "It was our bad luck. The device must be sensitive to vibration. We can only be grateful that we didn't set it off with our initial removal."

Clinically, Holmes picked up the file he had dropped. "We cannot leave the safe out like this," he said. "Nor can we safely remove the bomb. We shall have to replace the safe in the wall."

Watson picked up the back plate.

"What are you doing?" Holmes demanded.

"I was going to put the back on."

"And the vibration of your screwing it back on would very likely set it off! No, we shall have to hope that when the bomb goes off, the wall and other five sides of the safe are sufficient to muffle the explosion." He bent his knees, crouching by the front of the safe. "When I count to three, you must pick up the other end, smoothly and matching my movements as best you can. Calm, Watson."

John felt sweat spring out on his face- a cold and oily sensation. It was hard to look away from the gray metal of the safe into which he had reached a few minutes before.

"You must control your emotions, or they will control you," Holmes said irritably.

"Rathe told you that!" Watson said.

"Yes. He was a murderer and a liar. But he was also a good fencing instructor, and his advice is valuable."

"You cannot mean I should stifle my emotions out of existence altogether!" John protested.

"I assure you, you will feel much the better for it." As Watson showed no sign of coming round the other side of the safe to help him, Holmes stood up again. "The amount of trouble it has saved me over the past year has been considerable."

Watson shuddered. There was something vaguely monstrous about the gangly eighteen-year-old figure calmly disclaiming ownership of all the softer feelings in a voice that had cracked only a few years ago. For a moment he could fancy the still figure a kind of mechanical cuckoo, coolly winding himself up every morning to run through his paces every day... He did not know what he was doing here, or what he could offer a friend determined to run on clockwork. He should admire Holmes for the self-control which many a man twice his friend's age lacked.

"Maybe you can control yourself that way," he said instead. "I can't just decide to turn my heart off like a furnace in summer! Maybe you don't care if you live or die, but- but I happen to be quite attached to myself!"

"If we move the safe back without setting off the bomb, we will be perfectly safe," Holmes said with a veneer of patience.

"Well, of course we'll be safe then! That's not the outcome I'm worried about!"

"We cannot leave it as it is. If it goes off like this in the morning, when the bank opens, who knows how many people will be injured."

"I can't," Watson said. "I'm frightened."

"Of course you are!" Holmes snapped. "But your fear is pointless.

"Elizabeth told me that we should be reunited," Holmes continued, "together in some place beyond death. From her face as she died, I could almost believe it. But she also told me, before that, that the thing she feared most in the world was death, and its slow rotting in the ground." He moved forwards as if to pace, checked himself with a glance at the ominous safe.

"So what am I to think? That she was vouchsafed some proof of eternity as she died? Or that her failing brain, unable to cope with its choking fear, spun a fantasy? Because all that my most rigorous logic tells me is that Elizabeth is gone beyond recall and everything good about her is decaying in a wooden box."

He breathed. "There is no reason to fear death," he said. "If Elizabeth was undeceived, then there is nothing to fear. If I am right, then fear will avail nought, for nothing will come and bear us all away before long, regardless of our actions."

"So you're not frightened? Because it's not logical to be?"

"I did not say I was not frightened, Watson. I said I did not fear death."

A stark and terrible emotion passed over his face. Watson thought that Holmes' coldness might be better than this obvious torment. "I fear losing the one affection I have left untainted in this world. I cannot fail a friend again, Watson, and that is why on the count of three you will slowly and smoothly pick up your end of the safe and we will gently place it back in the wall."

John swallowed. "All right," he said.

The safe was threateningly silent.

"One- two- three," Holmes said, and Watson began to lift the safe. He hadn't counted on its heaviness, and he staggered slightly. His end of the safe dipped towards him.

"Careful!" Holmes commanded, and Watson managed a nod as he raised his end.

"Over to the wall," Holmes directed, and they began to walk with absurd baby-steps. Watson was watching Holmes' feet and trying to match him step for step, but somehow he kept starting or landing on the wrong foot altogether, time after time.

"Now, raise it slightly- good. Step away, Watson."

The safe was balanced on the very lip of the opening and Holmes stood at its other end, holding it up entirely. He slowly pushed, and with a dull grinding sound the safe began to slide back into the wall. Particles of putty sprinkled down onto the carpet.

When only a few inches of safe stuck out from the wall, it stuck, refusing to go any further. Holmes prepared to push again.

"Leave it," Watson said.

"The blast will not be completely contained," Holmes began.

"It's in the safe, the safe is in the wall, it's hardly going to fall out because of a few inches!" John said. "Let's leave while we can!"

They were a block away when they heard a muffled thumping sound. It was close enough to see first one, then another, then another window in the Thames Saving Bank building begin to leak smoke, absurdly like a comedy routine whose timing had slipped.

It was three in the morning. The fog was slow and thinly yellow through the winter streets, more than a breath. In unspoken accord, they moved towards a more suburban part of town, where rough work-hardened men with dirty leather aprons tumbled sullenly out of their houses, off to days of beating metal or hawking fish. Here, their well-dressed schoolboy figures were out of place, but not too suspiciously so. Holmes pulled his tie and cuffs askew and ran both hands through his curly mess of hair. "Roll a little," he instructed Watson, and began to walk with a peculiar degree of care.

They found a cramped teashop already humming with business on a crazed little sidestreet. Holmes sat down, while Watson went up to the proprietress to order tea- "And sandwiches," he said, since most of the customers were clutching thick planks of dark bread, plastered with dripping. She sized him up with a leer, took the money he held out, and turned away, evidently deciding not to burden him with his change.

Holmes had regained control of himself to such a degree Watson could well believe he had never lost it. But the memory of the terrible tension in Holmes' face would not leave him.

Yet there Holmes was, calm as ever, refolding his napkin.

"I don't see how you can have such complete control over your emotions!" John snapped.

Holmes raised wondering eyes. Perhaps it bespoke modesty that even now he was surprised when others failed to follow his chains of deduction. "I thought it would be from my behaviour that I cannot control my emotions, only manage them."

"Because you acted human for the first time since I met you this morning?"

"I had thought to put that behind me," Holmes said. "I have very few people to care about. Those I thought to trust either died or betrayed me. My family- well," he waved a hand, "they are out of the question. I found no-one at my new school to admire enough to allow them a chance to abandon me. The schoolmaster was terrified of me and my fellows timid. Yet when I needed an assistant, I thought of you. I find your friendship precious to me. Not only as a locus of connection to a happier past, but individually, for your courage, good humour, and thorough lack of a grasp of the deductive principle."

"Thank you," Watson said, not well-pleased.

"I mean it well. You provide me with a valuable point of comparison. I do not always think the way a common man might, so that his motivations or strategies sometimes appear unclear."

A slatternly waitress with dirty brown hair tangled into a rat's nest brought their tea on a tray dented with use.

Holmes picked up his cup. "If I could but cease to care, I would be the world's foremost thinking-machine. Alas, this appears beyond my powers. I can prevent myself from forming new attachments, but I should find it very difficult to cut old ones. And there is another consideration- certain physical necessities. A logical man would rule his body rather than let its base needs exert dominion over him. But no amount of self-control will keep a man from starving from lack of food or dying from lack of water. Do you follow?"

"Yes," Watson said, only in the sense that he had heard the words. Their sense was still opaque.

"Then. I need affection, Watson, and you are the only person I can trust to supply me with it. There is a certain logic in restricting these connections to one person- it lessens the risk," he added. "After our adventures, I feel we are close enough that I can request this of you without embarrassment."

"Holmes, you know how I respect you," Watson said. "I am already your friend- and shall ever remain so. You don't need to submit an official request for my goodwill."

Holmes smiled- small and stiff. "I knew you would not let me down. It is late- or rather, early. Shall we retire to our rooms?"

"All right," Watson said, confused but agreeable.

The next day they prepared for their investigations. Holmes was waiting in the parlour when Watson managed to drag himself out of bed and through the bathroom. From Brompton, Watson knew Holmes to be as exact about punctuality as he was not about tidiness, and he prepared to meet the cold scorn that Holmes was so adept at.

He was not subjected to more than two cutting remarks, though, before Holmes linked his arm in Watson's and dragged him out the room. Though Watson had gained an inch or so in height over the past year, Holmes still outstripped him by a fair margin. Watson was pulled along behind him, trying desperately to keep up.

"Where are we going?" he puffed.

"Fogerty's."

Fogerty's! The name sounded clandestine. Perhaps a backstreet pub, where clues could be found to the robbers' whereabouts. Or a pawnbroker's, filled with strange knickknacks and angry old men with hairy red cheeks. Or-

"- a bakery?" Watson said, once they were inside and sitting down.

"Not just any bakery," Holmes said. "I am informed it is the best cream-puffery in town."

Watson leaned across the table and lowered his voice. "What do creampuffs have to do with the robbery?"

"Nothing."

'Nothing?"

"Yes, nothing. We are here to further our relationship, as agreed this morning. I have chosen a location that displays my knowledge of your preferences and promises an enjoyable atmosphere."

"An enjoyable atmosphere? For what?"

"For our date. Affection is a good seedbed, but the stronger emotions must be cultivated. I certainly do not expect you to be physically intimate with me without first developing emotional-"

"Physically intimate!" Watson yelled.

"Precisely."

"But- we're men! We can't! It's not possible!" said Watson, who was discovering a barnyard apprenticeship with his father's practice had glossed over some important details.

"Of course it's possible," Holmes said. "You were in Greek class when we studied the Iliad."

"What?" said Watson.

"I know you go to a country school, where such practices may be rare, but surely you remember that weedy fellow Chusterley? He was terribly in love with Dudley. Always following him around, doing little errands, fawning as Dudley kicked him the ribs- The blond fellow, with the face like a terrier."

"That was- he was just sucking up for favour."

"He wrote very bad love poetry in his execrably recognizable hand and then left the blotters he'd used lying about the common room."

"To D., on our Eyes Touching Through a Window?" Watson said, remembering a particularly bad effort where 'English' had been rhymed with 'extinguish'.

"Precisely."

"Well- it was just a crush. They couldn't have, you know, done anything, even if Dudley had wanted to. It's biologically impossible."

"Not at all. I am not conversant with the mechanics, but such knowledge would not be difficult to obtain." Holmes laid his hand on Watson's arm. Watson almost jumped out of his seat. "I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this," Holmes said, in a similar tone Watson had used to thank John Grimsby when he had agreed to copy out his maths homework for the entire term.

Which was the wrong tone, Watson thought, to use with a friend you had just propositioned. Especially if you had made it clear that the propositioning was essential to your continuing as a functioning human being. So instead of trying to discuss it any further, Watson ate the creampuff the waitress brought him, and asked for a second- and another- and another.

This overindulgence necessitated an afternoon break while Watson slept the worst off. Holmes was eager to be off after dinner. "Where are we going?" Watson asked.

"How Chin Le's teahouse," Holmes said. "I have reason to believe it is more than it seems."

How Chin Le's was down by the dock, in a tarnished and leaning shack that looked as if it might contain stored supplies and rats in approximately equal proportions. Thee were no signs to advertise its presence.

Inside was another matter. The cracked and peeling walls here were replaced with smooth wood. The large room was divided into innumerable alcoves, colourful silken curtains screening one from the other. When Watson peered into the saffron-scented darkness, he could see supine silhouettes on the benches, limbs dreamily still.

"Holmes, this is an opium den," Watson hissed, clutching at Holmes' sleeve.

"Sharp as always." Holmes picked his way through the ranks of dreamers. Watson was shocked to see that many of them were Englishmen, with the faces of bankers and bureaucrats. He stopped by an alcove with a green silk cushion. "Let us sit here."

Watson entered dubiously. Two slabs of stained wood were substituting as chairs around a low table. He sat on one, trying to look depraved.

"You're leering," Holmes pointed out.

A waiter came by. Watson frankly stared. He was the first Chinaman he had ever seen, and indeed he looked some wholly different species of being. His skin was the very light brown of a creek after spring rain, his body compact and wiry. "Yes? You want?"

"Tea- and a word with your master," Holmes said. Watson stared at the waiter's hair. It had all been shaved off, except for a coin-sized patch in the back, which had been left to grow and then braided in a long string that reached the middle of the waiter's back. Or perhaps all Chinamen grew their hair in those skull-tails quite naturally?

"He will not see you."

"I disagree." Holmes pressed something into the waiter's hand. "Show him that."

The waiter looked down, made a disturbed clucking sound, and left without another word.

"What did you show him?"

"A token of passage that guarantees me every possible kind of help and safe passage," Holmes said. "They are only given out after some extraordinary service."

"What did you do for an opium lord?" Watson asked.

"Nothing. I picked it up at a flea market in Southhampton," Holmes said. "The man who sold it to me had no idea of its true value. I do not intend to try to pass it off as mine, but returning such a valuable item to its owner should entitle me to some consideration."

Another waiter came by, this one a young boy of surely no more than eight. He carried a tray with two handleless mugs filled with a dark brownish-green tea and a plate of sticky nothings.

"Where's the milk?" Watson asked.

"You don't drink milk in Eastern-style tea, Watson." Holmes nodded at the waiter. "You will show me to him now?"

"This way," the boy said.

Holmes stood. "I shan't be long."

This pattern was becoming all too familiar. Somehow, every outing with Holmes that did not involve outright crime turned upon tea and cakes. Gloomily, Watson essayed a sip of his tea. It was extremely hot, but also flavourless, and it smelt like hot grass. The sticky nothings were made of some paste, tackier than flour, and heavily sweet. The tea cleaned is mouth of their taste.

He saved some of the sweets for Holmes, who returned after a short period and drank his tea straight off. Watson wondered if he'd made a mistake sipping his. He noticed that the atmosphere of the club, which he had previously found so oppressive, was actually quite friendly. The small boy-waiters flitted from alcove to alcove, silent, and their braids hung straight down their backs without ever swaying to their movement.

They must have turned the heat up, for he was suddenly quite warm. He couldn't help but look at Holmes sitting across from him. His face was more masklike than ever, as if he had retreated behind his eyes. There was something Watson wanted to say to him now, while the room was so nice and warm- if only the walls would stop moving-

"Holmes," he said, bringing Holmes' attention back from whatever place it had been, "there's something I need to tell you." He grabbed for his companion's sleeve and missed.

Holmes looked unaccountably pleased. "Yes?" he encouraged.

"I need to tell you-" This was important. Very important. It was something that had to be said, even in public, even if all the strictures of his upbringing were against it. "I feel- that is-" He took a breath. Holmes' face was a mystery

"I feel I'm going to be sick," Watson whispered, leaned forwards, and was ill all over the heavy table.

He was feeling little better the next morning. Not only were his stomach and head still rotating counter-clockwise to each other, but the dusty sweetness of the strange candies had cloyed and clotted in his throat overnight. The taste did not improve upon extended acquaintance.

His bed was narrow and hard. Watson debated the wisdom of ever leaving it. "Holmes?" he said, in the loudest voice he could muster.

From the other room he heard a groan. "Holmes?"

"What is it?"

"I feel rather ill. I think those sweets did not agree with me."

"My felicitations, Watson, you have once again dragged a pearl of wisdom from the murky oysterbed of your deductive capabilities."

Watson did not feel up to extended metaphors. "I think perhaps- perhaps they drugged us. It would certainly explain my belief that the bedcovers were going to turn into a squid and strangle me."

"It was an opium den. Of course they drugged us."

"You were expecting this?"

"I was expecting they'd do a better job."

Regardless of the pain in his head, Watson struggled up to a sitting position. "Why didn't you warn me?"

Holmes sounded distinctly morose. "Because I was expecting a slightly different reaction than your decorating my shoes."

Watson lay back and groaned. "Tell me it's not the physical affection thing again."

"Generally, use of intoxicating substances lowers inhibitions and allows certain subconscious urges to come to the fore."

"You did. You drugged me so I'd want to... mmm..." Watson put a groping hand out for his glasses. They weren't to be found on the bedstand or the windowsill. Eventually, he found them underneath his pillow, where they had survived mostly unsquashed.

"I did not drug you. I put you in a situation where it was likely you'd be drugged."

"How is that any better? Wait- the bomb. That wasn't you, was it?"

"Credit me with some sense, if you please."

"Opium den," Watson pointed out.

"That sort of experience was the last option on my list."

"The experience of being blown to bits?"

"Near-death. In much the same way as intoxicants, sudden awareness of the brevity of life can give us the courage to act on feelings we might not otherwise acknowledge."

Holmes' voice had been growing progressively quieter. Watson levered himself off his bed.

Holmes' room was in a state of disorder that could easily lead Watson to believe he had been living there for months rather than days. He picked his way across the floor, avoiding the piles of crumpled clothing, packing-boxes, and what looked to be either a chemistry experiment or a miniature mushroom-farm. Holmes was supine upon his bed. Watson sat next to him.

"Holmes," he began.

"It's perfectly all right, Watson. It was an experiment unlikely to succeed from the beginning." One arm was flung across his eyes. Holmes spoke without moving it. "Consider this a momentary aberration."

Watson didn't know what to say. He changed conversational tack. "Why did you drink the tea? You were off seeing the opium denmaster when the waiter brought it- why are you laughing?"

"It's a haven of unspeakable vice, Watson, not one of Lord Baden-Powell's summer camps for militant schoolboys."

"Still."

"If you honestly think I would take advantage of you while you weren't in your right mind we have clearly spent too little time together. I was hoping-"

When it seemed unlikely that Holmes would begin to speak again of his own volition, Watson prodded him. "Yes?"

"I was hoping an altered state might allow us both to express ourselves."

"Are you saying you can't be- erm- physically intimate with me without being drugged to your eyebrows?"

"Although it is the logical course to take, I find it hard to begin."

Watson stared. Holmes flinched, as if he could sense the force of Watson's incredulity even with his eyes still hidden. "This is insane," Watson said with conviction. He began to unbutton his nightshirt.

"I assure you, I agree," Holmes said. "We need not speak of it again. What are you doing?"

"I'm getting into bed," Watson said, doing so. "I should think that much would be obvious. You'd better take your shirt off too, otherwise it won't be fair."

"Of course," Holmes said. He sat up. Keeping his back to Watson, he pulled off his shirt. His back was very long and angular, and the knobs of his spine were clear. The skin was quite pale, and about the same colour as his forearms, showing how rarely he wore short sleeves. There was a dusting of freckles on the nape of his neck, and only there, as if he had shook them out of his hair one day.

Watson looked at the lines of Holmes' back. Hardly anyone would see this, he thought. There were very few people to whom Holmes would turn his unarmored back. That spoke of trust. The skin was pebbled with goosebumps, though the room had a good fire. Very gingerly, he put a hand up to touch Holmes' shoulder.

Holmes sat stiffly. Watson stroked his hand down past the bony shoulderblade.

"Watson," Holmes said, agitated.

"Ssh." Watson stroked the shoulderblade again, calming. "Lie down."

His fantasies, when he had had them, had been of soft women, comprised entirely of face and, when he was daring, perhaps a hand to hold passionately. He had never imagined lying, skin to skin, with someone else, breathing in their closest secrets.

"Let me do this." He didn't feel the urge to turn away. This wasn't Chusterley's pandering ways- it was Holmes, his closest, most aggravating friend. "Turn over."

Holmes slowly rolled over to face him, and Watson's breath caught.

Sherlock Holmes, whose avowed goal it was to become a thinking-machine, wore the shattered expression of a child crying in its darkened room, raw and open. His eyes wandered, not quite looking at Watson. Watson began to explore Holmes' front, gentle with the new closeness. He touched the chest. He rubbed a thumb over a mole near Holmes' collarbone. And very carefully, he explored Holmes' face, tracing the strong eyebrows and cheekbones, touching Rathe's scar.

Holmes sighed- a huff of breath, no more, but his face was so close to Watson's that it felt as though his soul was riding the air. His hand came up to stroke Watson's face and, very gently, he removed Watson's glasses.

They were close, now, closer than they had ever been before, and the degree of their closeness made the familiar geographies of their faces into a strange and unfamiliar land. Holmes' stroked Watson's lip with a gentle finger and when they kissed the pressure was so much the same that Watson could hardly tell when the kiss had begun. He could feel the heat of Holmes' skin. It was intoxicating. Watson judged that Holmes felt the same, for his wondering touches were constant, always a hand, a shoulder or thigh laying against Watson.

The headache receded. Even the roiling pain in his stomach.

After a time of sleepy exploration, Watson raised himself on one shoulder. "What about the robbers?"

"I would say they've gotten away with it by now," Holmes said.

"But isn't there anything about the way they comb their hair or open doors that gives you a clue?"

"Hardly. They're like all their kind, Watson. Sooner or later, they will tire of resting on their laurels, and strike again."

"You speak as if it were your job."

"I learnt some time ago that you cannot rely on others to do your duty," Holmes said. "And I owe these villains a debt. Though it is slightly ameliorated by the bonus they have brought me, I cannot call it settled until we have balanced accounts."

"I'm glad they did," Watson said. "It seemed the bomb made you realize you still had emotions. A fear of death is natural, Holmes. It is an instinct that keeps us safe."

"You mistake, Watson. It was not fear that paralyzed me. I was simply surprised because the possibility of the robbers setting a bomb had never occurred to me. I believed I had read their motivations and actions sufficiently, but evidently I was mistaken."

Watson smiled. That was the sort of thing Holmes would think of first. "Wait. Then- you weren't- with the near-death experience, you said, it makes people realize things..."

Holmes looked away. "That ridiculous pipe you gave me. There was a - scene, and I was forced to leave my lodgings in a rush, but I returned at some risk later to retrieve it. I had to question why I would hold onto such an apparently useless thing. It was not for the pleasure I had in smoking it: it was not valuable in itself. Putting such impossibilities aside, I was left with a merely improbable supposition- that the pipe was valuable to me for its connection to you."

Holmes looked carefully past him.

"Why do you think I called you to come to London? It took me some time to gain the courage to act on my discovery. I hoped to discover if you had similar feelings by a series of experiments. I suppose I should be glad they ended with the opium den. If you had proven recalcitrant past that, my last plan was to go exploring on the nastier side of the docks. I was certain we could find several groups of people willing to put us near death for interfering with their activities."

"You know, when we were only friends, you let other people put me in deadly danger," Watson said.

"I was confident of my ability to protect you from serious harm," Holmes said stiffly.

Watson moved a few inches closer, so more skin touched. "You could have written me a letter," he said sleepily. "Or a poem. To W., on a Question Raised by Your Pipe."

"That," Holmes said austerely, "would hardly be a scientific way of eliciting data."

 

 

 


End file.
